Case Details

Randall Lynn Ayers was sixteen years old when a fifteen-year-old girl mistakenly identified him as the man who robbed, raped, and shot her in the neck in 1981. The jury convicted him, though friends testified that Ayers was with them at the time of the crime. He was sentenced to fifteen to fifty years in prison, but was released after nearly nine years when the real culprit, Robert Minton, confessed to the crime. When the victim looked at photos of Ayers and Minton after his confession, she was unable to identify the attacker. A judge formally dismissed the charges and Ayers eventually received $367,700 in compensation.